Leading the procession were hundreds of soldiers who had acted escort from Yachow. These were followed by a number of sedan chairs in which sat the officials accompanying the general in his pilgrimage to Lhasa, And behind these came the military leaders on the frontier, Chinese and Tibetan, mounted on' their horses. The gen-chair had a heavy bodyguard, reminding one very much of the old days of the Manchu Dynasty.
One chair in particular caused considerable speculation. It was entirely closed up and covered with green oil cloth and carried by four men. "Perhaps the general's lady was inside, perhaps she wasn't"
have a tal-tal with him, so that was dismissed. "But who was Inside?" No one had seen the chair opened so no one could offer any information. It was heavy as the men who carried it showed. Tt was an borate chair and some suggested that it had been given to Gen. Huang, by the Governor of Szechuen as a resent for his long journey. Some Seemed to know everything about it and others knew nothing.
'Tibet is a cold country and sometimes its weather shows a very nasty spirit to travellers, and so to keep out the cold and' wind and snow, Gen, Huang has brought a specially constructed sedan chair. He will probably ride a Tibetan horse but Sedan chair gives peculiar prestige to any big man travelling on th Root of the World. The special commissioner has 72 travelling days between Tachienlu and Lhasa and the winter will be on him before he reaches the sacred capital.
Tachienlu is still living very much {in the east where the histrionic still has "considerable value. For some, days before the Chinese general arrived an immense amount baggage and boxes preceded him, carried by some 200 animals. For effect, this was of tremendous importance, and it was not lost on the 'Tibetans. 'The old Amban cavalcade across Asia from Peking to Lhasa is being repeated and the Tibetans appreciate and value every man by the size of his caravan. 'The lonely' rider inthe Forbidden Land will probably be robbed. the big caravan pastes on unmolested. Report has it! that about 1,000 ula will be required to see the general and his retinue across the Land of the Lamas, and the bigger the man the bigger the caravan, and the bigger the reception fand the greater the possibility of everything going successfully. This is how the east moves and we have not. changed very much on the borders of Tibet. Gen. Huang has created the impression necessary to the success o€ his expedition and only the presence of some gigantic monster with its ugly head sticking above the waters of the muddy Yangtze wilt delay his footsteps.
The Tibetans like a big man and Jo generous man and the Nanking (government has done all in its power fo ensure the success of its envoy: six lakhs of dollars being placed at This disposal to see him safely to Lhasa. This one fact alone is sulfi~ cient to convince the woolly nomad that the commissioner is no ordinary man; and hundreds of mysterious boxes containing all kinds of nice things, presents and otherwise, bear this onl, Wen Tsong-yao was, the last "Amban to return this way from Tibet under the old regime, and Huang Mucsong is the first to enter under the Chinese Republic.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.